


Burnout Vibes: Deep Space Discord Edition

by excessiveprepositionalphrases



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: EHHH it's time for more fun in our self insert mass universe, Friend Insert, Gen, Other, Self-Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:35:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26020498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/excessiveprepositionalphrases/pseuds/excessiveprepositionalphrases
Summary: Space Savannah is very tired. Mostly a story about the experience of burnout and the great satisfaction of making your friends take care of themselves. 100% gen, T only for language. Space me cannot stop cursing.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 11
Collections: Deep Space Discord Literary Universe





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, this one's just therapy for me and my friends and I feel no shame,.

“Nice hoodie,” Irena said, a hint of teasing in her voice. Most of the group were perched in a circle around a table in the replimat, sharing a couple of large plates of breakfast food. Irena was grinning at me.

“Yes, it’s lovely. I’m sure they gave that to you when you graduated,” Giuditta added, popping a berry into their mouth for dramatic effect. I squinted at them in confusion.

“What?”

The whole table cut their eyes at me in unison, with a sense of collective, if affectionate, exasperation.

“Starfleet Medical, class of ’68?” Susan questioned.

“Look me in the eyes and tell me I wouldn’t wear this.”

“Oh, you would. You are. You’d buy it, too. And I’d almost believe you had, but that doesn’t fit you at all. If you pulled those cuffs down, your hands would be halfway up the sleeves. Where did you actually get that?”

“Where do you think?” I asked.

“The fact that the only person I know with arms that long just happens to be a graduate of Starfleet medical’s class of 68 does give me a fairly solid hypothesis,” Susan said with a laugh.

I swaddled myself in my stolen sweater and slid down into my chair.

“Don’t make fun of me,” I said, with sarcastic offense.

“We’re not,” Robertson reassured, taking another bite of the pastry they were eating. “I think we’re mostly surprised that you haven’t borrowed Julian’s clothes before.”

“Borrowed implies he knows I have it.”

“Okay, stolen.”

“That’s more like it,” I said.

* * *

“So, what’s wrong with it?”

I poked at the screen. With every button I pressed, the computer flashed an angry pink warning: “Unable to connect to central database.” I barely resisted looking Lieutenant Sulak directly in the eyes and telling him to read the error message again.

“It seems like it’s unable to connect to the database. There may be an issue with the terminal, or the database itself. You’re the third person I’ve spoken to today with this issue, so I suspect it’s an issue with the database itself. I’ll need to troubleshoot that more directly.”

“When can I expect my console repaired?”

I put on my most patient face.

“It’ll start working on its own when the database is repaired. I’ll try to get up to work on the database later today, but it has to be worked on in person. I have no remote repair capabilities for the central database, so I’ll need to get into the core to fix it. Like I said, I’ll aim to do so before the end of the day.”

“See that you do.”

This was an average afternoon call. An angry Lieutenant, a verbose and obvious error message, a deficiency in the skill of reading. The unfortunate part was that everything I told him had been true, and repairing the database meant going to the database: a large, uncooperative server that made its thorny nest in upper pylon 2. I’d dealt with it before, and every time, it turned into a nightmare. It was already 1400 hours, and my stomach was growling. I wanted food, and a break, but I couldn’t see either of those things in my future. I packed up my kit and shuffled off in the general direction of the turbolift. I only got a few steps before Ensign Caldwell waved me down.

“Hey, computer girl!” he greeted me. “Any idea when my console will be fixed?”

“I’ll try to have someone on it before the end of the day, but I’m very busy at the moment.”

He made a face that suggested this was not the answer he was hoping to hear.

“I’m sorry,” I called, power walking away. “Too many things broken.”

I decided there and then to sneak up into the pylon as much as I could, but some human interaction was unavoidable. I was pleasantly surprised when the person who sidled up next to me on the promenade was not an annoyed client, but Robertson.

“Joining us for lunch?,” they asked, walking at high speed to keep up with me.

“I’d love to, but if I don’t fix the database I’m going to have an angry Vulcan at my door at 0400.”

“The database can wait, Savannah.”

“It really can’t,” I argued.

“Have you even eaten today?”

“Nooooo…”

Robertson looked at me with immense judgement.

“I’m fine!” I protested. “Really, I’m fine. I do this all the time.”

“You worry me, sometimes,” they said.

“Yeah, well. I worry Julian too, but here I am.”

“Promise me you’ll eat something?”

“I promise.”

I hopped into my second turbolift of the journey.

“Really, I promise.”

The further into the engineering cores of the station you got, the less people you started to see. The promenade bustled at every hour of the day and night, but upper pylon 2 was practically empty. The one person I crossed paths with, an Andorian ensign with a permanent look of annoyance on his face, had yet more problems for me.

“Are you one of Miles’ techs?”

“I am indeed.”

“I’ve been having problems with my console all morning. It keeps telling me it can’t connect to the database.”

I sighed. “The database is currently down. I suspect something’s gone wrong with the server. I’m on my way to work on it right now.”

“Good to know. I spoke to another technician this morning who promised me a solution but it’s never been fixed. I’m unable to do my job without computer access.”

“I understand. We’re working on it as fast as we can.”

“I mean really,” he continued, “none of us are able to do our jobs without computer access.”

_Yes, thank you. Bastard._

“Trust me, I know! We’ll make sure you have an update as soon as anything changes.”

“Thanks,” he said, sharply and simply, and went on his way. These were the moments I wanted simply to lay down on the floor.

It was unreasonably cold in the upper pylons in general, and keeping the server at a reasonable operating temperature meant that the actual room the database was stored in, a small, round space affectionately known as “the nest,” was always a brisk 17 Celsius. Far too cold for my bones. I immediately regretted that I had taken off my stolen hoodie before clocking in for the day.

The server itself was large and, debatably, evil. It flashed pink and teal, a leftover from the Cardassians. It was the one thing we’d never been able to successfully replace with a Federation system, and it failed to cooperate with the other Federation systems in a way that suggested conscious hatred.

“Hello, baby,” I said aloud, somewhere between awe and destain. I always found myself talking to the computers. It wasn’t as if I actually thought they would understand me, but it seemed to work an inordinate percentage of the time.

The single, undersized screen on the side of the dated, hulking machine flashed a neon pink message:

“Internal diagnostics failure. Error code 0x008008a7.”

Right. That was a known error. Dying relay. This, at least, I knew how to fix.

* * *

“Eventually you might be able to go an entire day without having at least one of the technicians around, but today…is not that day,” Susan said, limping slightly into the infirmary. She was leaning on Giuditta, whose curly pink hair surrounded them like a cloud of cotton candy. Julian was on top of them both in a second, ducking under Susan’s free arm.

“I’ve been wondering where you were! I haven’t seen you or Savannah all day,” he said, helping her onto a bed.

Susan painfully swung her legs onto the bed. “I wish I was only here to …ow…hang out,” she said, wincing against the pain.

“How did it start?” Julian asked, already focusing his tricorder on the injured knee.

“It’s my own fault. I I banged it on a ladder…I should have been playing more attention.”

“I’m not concerned with how you did it,” Julian said softly. He wrapped his hand under her ankle and lifted her lower leg, carefully flexing the knee. “Let me know when it hurts,” he said.

Susan was struggling not to react to his touch. She was almost too distracted by it to notice the shooting pain in her knee when it was flexed past 90 degrees. “There,” she said, making a face. “Definitely there. And I appreciate your attitude, but it’s really my fault. If I hadn’t been moving so fast…”

“No self loathing in my infirmary. That’s an order, Lieutenant Hix.”

He spoke with a serious tone but a broad smile, and accidentally turned Susan’s heart to jelly. Despite the pain, she smiled back.

“It’s a common tendon injury,” he continued. “I’ll have you back to work in no time.”

Susan frowned as she watched him pass some sort of instrument over her injured knee, almost disappointed by how easy the solution had been. “Think you could delay that a little, doc? A couple hours, maybe?”

Julian understood immediately. “I’m sorry, I was wrong. You’ll need complete rest for at least 3 days.”

“You’re a real one.”

He smiled and patted her no-longer-injured knee. “You can stay right where you are as long as you like.”

“That’s exactly what I plan on doing,” she said, and flopped sleepily back into the bed.

“And what about you, Giuditta? All well?”

“Who, me?” they asked with mock innocence. “I’m just fine, doctor. Unless you have some new data on Cardassian mating practices for my database…”

“I hate to disappoint such a wonderful archivist, but alas, I have nothing to share.”

“You’re no fun sometimes. Susan! Stay off that leg. Let the good doctor here take care of you.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice."


	2. Chapter 2

I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead into the cold metal of the evil machine.

“Why…why do you do these things to me,” I asked it aloud. I’d replaced the relay that was the source of all my problems – at least, I thought I had. But now, as I tried to convince the machine to cooperate, it flashed a new error with a new error code, one I hadn’t seen before. I had opened the system, poked around inside it, searched all throughout it for any evidence of what could be preventing it from booting, but it continued to flash at me, pink and angry.

“Fatal hardware error. Fatal hardware error. Fatal hardware error.”

“What hardware!” I asked. “If you’d just tell me what hardware…”

“Robertson to Savannah.”

“Afternoon,” I said bitterly.

“Wasn’t your shift meant to be over 15 minutes ago? Where are you?”

“I’m still stuck in the upper pylon, fighting the database.”

“You can leave that for tomorrow, you know.”

“I’ll be down soon. I promise. Just as soon as I figure out what hardware is failing.”

“I’m counting on that,” Robertson said. “Robertson out.”

I could feel my brain starting to fray at the edges.

“What’s wrong with you,” I asked the machine. “Please just…tell me what’s wrong with you…”

Right, so on to other methods. Known good components. I pulled the boxes of replacement parts off the wall, shut down the server, and cracked it open. I counted the major internal components: 14. This was going to take a while, but it was doable. I remove the first replacement component from its box and carefully swapped them out, and booted the machine.

“Fatal hardware error.”

“Oh, fuck you,” I said aloud, and powered it down again. I swapped the old component back in, and moved on to the next one. I could feel myself getting hungrier and colder and my brain getting fuzzier and less cooperative.

I was on my 4th unsuccessful replacement when my combadge beeped again.

“Hey…uhhh…Savannah? Isn’t it time for you to get back down here?” Susan’s voice said.

“Stupid…database has me trapped.”

“Right. I think you need to take a break.”

“When it’s fixed,” I said quietly.

* * *

Robertson hovered in the infirmary doorway. They were debating whether to step inside, or simply have their conversation from where they stood. It really wouldn’t seem too odd to do so. Not being the patient significantly took the edge off the discomfort they felt being in the infirmary, but they still weren’t quite comfortable with the space, even when the context wasn’t medical at all. They decided to try to overcome it a bit and stepped inside, and winced when the sharp, familiar medical smell hit them. Susan smiled at the sight of her friend.

“Hey you. Not used to seeing you around here.”

Robertson shuddered. “This won’t be the start of a new tradition, I assure you,” they said. “I’m just seeking Julian.”

“You’ve found him,” the doctor said. “What can I do for you? You look a bit shakey.”

“It’s just…this place. Anyway, I’m fine. I need a favor.”

“Tell me more.”  
“We’re starting to get concerned about Savannah. She should have been off shift an hour ago, but she’s still in upper pylon 2, trying to fix part of the station’s computer. A couple of us have tried to get ahold of her on the comms, but she won’t stop brushing us off. We’re starting to think the only person she’ll listen to is you. Could you...get her down from there?”

"No promises, but I can try."

* * *

It wasn’t until I stood up that I realized my head was spinning. I got a few inches off the floor before I sat right back down.

_Oh, that’s not good._

Right, last part. It’s always the last part you try. I peeled myself off the floor again, much more slowly this time, and booted the database. The quiet whirr of a fan. The quiet, familiar startup beeps. This was good, right? It had to be.

_Fatal hardware error. Fatal hardware error. Fatal hardware error._

It all hit at once. The cold, the hunger, the woozy, nauseous feeling in my stomach and head. Mostly the frustration. I’d failed. I could hear the angry people talking to me in the morning, the Vulcan who couldn’t work, the sheer hatred coming from every person who depended on this system to do their jobs. I sat back down on the floor. I was headed into breakdown territory, and I knew it.

 _Clank_. A boot on the metal grating of the floor.

“Come to join me in my pain?” I asked, not bothering to identify my guest. I figured it was probably one of the crew coming to look for me.

“I wouldn’t quite put it that way.”

“Oh,” I whispered. “It’s you.” I looked up from my spot on the floor. Julian was almost too big for the small space. He wasn’t actually close to hitting his head on the ceiling, but he seemed out of place somehow. “Hi.”

“Hey.” His voice was soft. Measured. It was the tone he normally used when he thought I was going to run away from him. A relic of a different kind of relationship, when I used to be scared of him.

I could tell that if I actually tried to speak I was just going to cry. I was happy to see him. I was always happy to see him, but it was the kind of happiness that just brought me closer to crying, instead of further away. I was always holding myself together, even in the best of moments. Right now, it was everything I could do. A little bit, or a lot, of energy, just holding my composure together. Julian’s magic was the way he always made me feel like I didn’t have to hold on anymore. It was a wonderful, beautiful thing. It was the reason I loved to be around him so much, and the reason I could sleep in the infirmary even when my insomnia was at its worst. The problem was that the moment I let go, all the emotions tended to come out at once. Right now, that was just going to mean a whole lot of weeping.

Julian folded his long legs and silently sat down on the floor next to me. The silence was oddly comfortable. 

“Are you alright?” he asked. I shook my head. “Good thing you’re sitting next to a doctor, then.”

It was his way of asking me for details without specifically asking me.

“I tried to stand up and I almost fell over. I feel kind of light-headed. If I move my head too fast, my eyes don’t go with it. I’m freezing, too. It’s way too cold up here.”

“Oh! That reminds me. I brought you something.”

Julian gave me a mischievous look and extended an item in my direction – a warm, grey bundle of clothing, instantly recognizable as the hoodie I had…borrowed from his possession.

“Thought you might want this,” he said. “I know it’s cold up here.”

My stomach dropped.

“You…definitely weren’t supposed to know I had that. I’m sorry, I sort of…permanently borrowed it. It’s just, I was working on one of the computers in the infirmary, and it was cold, and that was lying around, and it was very warm and it actually kind of fit me, and then I didn’t want to give it back…I kind of thought you wouldn’t notice. I’m sorry, it’s kind of creepy for me to be outright stealing your clothes anyway, and-”

“Woah, woah! I’m going to stop you right there. If you want it, it’s yours. I never wore it anyway. I get the feeling you’ll get way more mileage out of it than I ever did.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “I mean, if you want it back, you can have it.”

He shook his head. “That’s definitely your hoodie now.”

I took it from him gratefully and put it on, but regretted my choices almost immediately. The act of putting on a hoodie definitely involved moving my head too much. I winced and covered my eyes with my hands. Julian rubbed my back.

“Do you feel shaky?”

“Yeah.”

“When was the last time you ate?”

“…breakfast,” I said.

“By my math, that was 12 hours ago.”

“At least,” I confirmed.

“Your blood sugar is probably low. I don’t even need a tricorder for that diagnosis,” he said. “You’ve got to eat, you know.”

“No!”

“Yes, you do! Doctor’s orders. Anyway, why wouldn’t you want to?”

I paused for a moment to collect my thoughts.

“It’s like…in order to keep going, I can’t…if I stop to eat, I have to…feel things. If I stop and take care of myself, I’ll notice how miserable I am. If I stay stony, I can keep going. I can focus on what I’m doing. I can block out how frustrated I am. If I stop to think about being hungry…I have to let all of it in at once. The only way I can keep going in this job is to just…not think about myself at all. If I can stay closed off, none of it will get to me. But if I let even the littlest feeling in, I’m letting all of them in. And if I let all of them in, I’m just going to cry. And I can’t do that. I have to…keep it together.”

“That’s what friends are for,” Julian disagreed. “You don’t have to keep it together all of time. We’re all here for you.”

He paused.

“Let us be here for you.”

“I’m not quite good at that. It’s the little bit of Klingon in my soul.”

“Just try, okay? And the first thing is to let me take care of you, right now.”

“You’re mean,” I said, smiling at him.

“How on earth is that mean?”

“Saying stuff like that when you know I’m emotionally obligated to do what you say…utterly manipulative, if you ask me.”

“Making you take of yourself is exactly the kind of mean you love me for, and you know it.”

I rolled my eyes at him but leaned into his shoulder anyway.

"Anyway, I can't do that. I have to fix this. The whole station is waiting on it."

"Too bad. I say it's time for you to take a break, and there's not a single person on this station who can overrule me on that. Come on. Let’s go get you something to eat. Do you feel stable enough to walk?”

“Probably,” I answered. “But if I pretend I’m not, I get to lean on you, so let’s pretend I’m not.”

He laughed. “Deal.”

* * *

“I don’t know why I thought you were going to bring me something healthy,” I said, looking down at the large slice of chocolate cake Julian was handing me.

“We need to get your blood sugar back up. I’m not particularly concerned with how I do it.”

“My stomach isn’t super happy with me either,” I said. “Frankly, nothing really sounds edible, but I think I can handle cake.”

The look he gave me said he had already taken all of that into account.

“There she is!”

Robertson looked relieved to see me. “I knew he’d get you down.”

I just nodded, with a mouthful of cake. “All of you know how to manipulate me entirely too well. That’s not nice, you know, sending him. Entirely unfair of you.”

“Well, it worked, didn’t it?” they argued. “I’d say it was perfectly justified. You can’t keep doing this to yourself. You’ve got to eat, you know.”

“I think I’m learning that.”

Susan lifted her head sleepily. “You promise us no more nonsense?” she asked from the other side of the infirmary, half conscious.  
I nodded. “I promise.”


End file.
